Adaptive Curmudgeon

Since my thesis is that the shit has already hit the fan; what more can I say? That these are interesting times? How is that reassuring? It’s not. Yet I’m delighted (if nervous) that the unreality of past years has given way to cold hard fact. I never wanted false reassurances. False reassurances are bullshit. I don’t traffic in bullshit.

Things might get worse. Things might get ugly. Things might get weird. That has always been true. That large groups of people are suddenly pondering their own decisions and fortunes doesn’t mean it was any less true in years past. It just means they’re waking up from a very expensive and demeaning slumber.

It’s easy to wonder if America is done for. The Egyptian, Roman, and British empires all dominated their version of the known world. Egypt is in revolution, London had riots last week, and the Vatican can’t even manufacture a hatchback.

But these aren’t yet the worst of times. Every generation has it’s own existential threats. Folks who grew up in the depression were still hoarding scraps of yarn and old buttons in the era of disco. Intervening generations had to deal with Nazis and Imperial Japan. I grew up fully aware that the mighty Russian bear had ICBMs aimed at the baseball card collection on my dresser. As I child I saw gas lines and wondered if there would still be cars when I was old enough to have a license. Putin hasn’t re-enacted Red Dawn, I sold the baseball cards on e-bay, and my truck is bigger, faster, and stronger than the one my dad owned. The world is as wondrous as it is unpredictable. Uncertainty about the future isn’t the whole story.

America has an ace in the hole called “gumption”. We do the impossible with impressive regularity! America is the land where poor people are fat. Where you can have just about anything you can afford.  Where you can do whatever seems like a good idea…regardless of what the neighbors (or Europe) thinks.  We had Rosie the Riveter in 1945 and we’re competing with societies that still keep their women in glad bags. Regardless of Obamacare, when a billionaire or foreign president gets mortally ill they hustle for the Mayo clinic. Our kids run lemonade stands because they want to. We invented monster trucks, microwaves, the blues, pop-rocks, and cowboys. American gun nuts bitch because cannons and machine guns are expensive. American motorheads build muscle cars that’ll peel the paint off a Chevy Volt. Here it’s legal and common to tell your boss to stuff it and seek a better job.

Americans are adaptable. They’ll skip town if they feel like it. They can move to the exciting city. They can hunker down in the boonies. If they can afford it they might do both. Americans leave states that piss them off and flock to ones with better economic conditions (ask California and Texas who’s gaining and who’s losing). We’re the nation where rednecks who cling to their guns and religion vote and do it while wearing greasy overalls. We think “spread the wealth” is fighting words.  Despite efforts to start friction between classes a lot of us don’t give two shits who’s riding in a corporate jet so long as we’re not footing the bill. Americans grow, learn, die, get married, have kids, make good decisions, party, laugh, move, make bad decisions, change, adapt, and generally keep on doing whatever the hell we want expressly without government approval.

The future, as shocking as this sounds, is bright!

Sometime you have a challenge before you. A big one. Maybe you won’t surmount it.

You dither. Hold back. Is there a way out?

Then, however it may happen, you’ve crossed the Rubicon. There’s no going back. You’re going to make it or you’ll fail. You’re no longer a passive observer. You’re in the shit for real.

That feeling is better than denial. It’s constructive. It’s positive. You cannot commit to success until you dispense with false illusions. Everything has changed. It’s hard to say when. Maybe it was a done deal before my blog was started. Maybe not. It’s hard to know the exact moment when you’ve gone past the point of no return. But it’s in the rearview mirror and receding.

Unreality is ebbing. Ossified thinkers can no longer hold the tide back. Willful denial has been discarded and cleaning house is the order of the day. Things are changing and they’ll continue to change with or without political leadership. They’ll change if you adapt nimbly. They’ll change if you stand in the middle of the road weeping. After the shit has hit the fan, there is no going back.

Washington is barely capable of propping up it’s own weight. But America is getting feisty. Americans once again care who has a job. Who pays the bills. And, more darkly, who doesn’t and why not.

Don’t believe me? Think America can return to sleeping at the wheel? Not a chance. Here are a few examples of unreality blown away by values rooted in the terra firma.

Examples from our craptacular two party system:

• In February 2009, some guy on a trading floor went on a rant. From that spark, the Tea Party materialized to horrify beltway Washington.  Nobody in power’s orbit is happy about flyover rednecks complaining about debt. The press relentlessly hammers the Tea Party with “teabagger” jokes, satire, exaggeration, dismissiveness, and tantrums. Our vice president called them terrorists. It hasn’t worked. The Tea Party exists despite (and possibly because of) entrenched opposition.  It shifts elections. Wishing them away hasn’t yet made them vanish.
• The last mid term elections were an epic shellacking that cost the Democrats 6 Senators, 63 Congressmen, and the majority in the House. Regardless of cause (Obamacare?) the populace went from granting Obama the election to inflicting a crushing defeat on his party.  A u-turn in 24 months. Also a hint applied with a sledgehammer.

Examples from Washington’s pet called the press:

• The press truly pulled out all the stops for their guy in 2008.  I felt dry humped and discarded.  I was not alone.  The press periodically abandons all pretense of objectivity but this time was different.  It bit them on the ass and they’ve lost their shirts. Newsweek claimed we are all socialists now and crashed so hard they were sold for $1. The Washington Post’s profits dropped 50% in one quarter. The New York Times was trading at $48 in 2004 and now it’s trading at $8. There’s nothing new about a biased press (ask Orson Welles) but now is when events have run them down like dogs.  Their refusal to adapt is a self inflicted mortal wound.

Examples of politicians applying the brakes on spending:

• In February the Republican Governor of Wisconsin took a shot at frugality. Thousands protested, things were broken, threats were shouted, and the president chose to meddle in non-federal affairs. The protesters failed…face plant!  The Governor got about what he wanted. Would it have played out differently in 1980? 2004? Quite likely. But not now.  Update: Round two was a $30,000,000 recall campaign, which failed.  The status quo lost two for two.
• In April, the Federal budget; which was due the previous September went into sudden death overtime. A close vote minutes before the deadline dodged a shutdown. What was the focus of the fight? Flag burning? Gays in the Military? The war on drugs? Flag burning gay soldiers on drugs? No! It was debt and spending. Nothing more, nothing less.  Americans have grown a spine and are fighting mad about debt.  They’ve stopped using denial to pay the bills.
• In July, Minnesota had it’s own budget scuffle. Their Governor vetoed a budget that didn’t increase spending enough to suit him. The state was shut down for 14 days.  One party agitated for more spending and taxes and the other held fast. Eventually the Governor accepted a “compromise” that was pretty much a total defeat.  He’d misread the moment.  Frugality (or at least a lukewarm attempt at it) is today’s game.
• In August the debt ceiling was raised. So what?  It has been raised more times than Lindsey Lohan’s skirt; a shameful 74 times since 1962. This time it got ugly. The nation went to the brink of default. A fourth replay of the Federal Budget battle and showdowns in Wisconsin and Minnesota. “Kick it down the road” didn’t fly in 2011 like it normally does.

Examples of things that looked like paranoia which are looking prescient:

• Right now is the time when “fiat currency” transitions from a phrase used by bunker dwelling goldbugs to Grandma’s worries.  Fiat currency means that money is nothing but symbolic green pieces of paper.  Folks turn to gold when “full faith of the Government” isn’t reassuring.  Gold was trading at $330 on the day of Clinton’s first election.  It dropped to $250 for Bush’s first election.  Eight years later it was $750 for Obama’s election.  A year and a half later it was $1,200 and I was writing my first post.  It was $1,700 when I wrote the draft of this “anniversary” article.  It hit $1,850 before I scheduled the post.  It topped at $1,917 on Monday.  Basics like currency are no longer taken for granted.
• Ayn Rand ranted against socialist meddling in 1957.  Nobody cared.  Suddenly, 52 years later, Atlas Shrugged is terrifying.  A half million copies were sold in 2009 alone.  When 1,200 pages of didactic wholesale economic destruction is riveting we know “who is John Galt”.
• Standard and Poor’s cut America’s credit rating. The DOW immediately crapped itself.  Folks no longer pretend to be surprised.  This is exactly what was supposed to happen, it happened for the right reasons, and it happened on schedule. As a counterpoint Texas, the butt of jokes on both coasts, has gained an AAA rating. Ouch!
• California, a State that would like to lead the nation, ran out of money and issued IOUs.  Maybe they should ask Texas for a loan?

Examples involving other nations:

• Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain have all skated on thin ice.  Now they’re regretting it. Britain and Iceland get honorable mention too. European  welfare states have teetered forever but now is when the show gets interesting. Germany is unhappily facing the yoke that America won’t shoulder.  Greek citizens protest in the delusion that protesting makes money appear. Paris is losing it’s title as the host of quasi-predictable underclass riots to Britain.  Europe is in such a panic they’ve forgotten to sneer at antiquated American morality while genuflecting for EU and UN technocrats.
• Since December there have been revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen. America had nothing to do with any of them.  Societies that looked like they were cast in cement are fluid right now.

Have I made my point? Have I made the case that the shit has hit the fan, that Elvis has left the building, that denial is obsolete? I hope so.  Denial was unbecoming of our great nation. I’m glad it’s over.

What would bring reality back into focus? How? When would it happen?

I had a theory. My theory was that the minute Baby Boomers began to retire they would withdraw their 401(k) from the stock market en masse. When they all sold regardless of the underlying asset’s value it would irrationally distort prices too low.  Just as when everyone buying (in the guise of a 401(k)) regardless of the underlying asset’s value had cranked the DOW out of whack.  Meanwhile, the government would be forced to irrationally devalue the dollar to paper over their Ponzi nature of Social Security.  Both  would certainly be stampedes to avoid.  But when?  Baby Boomers are a herd, not a single person. Some would retire first with others to follow. When would demographics finally pull the trigger?

Even if they didn’t light the fuse, Bush and Obama put the spark in the vicinity. When the economy lurched (as all economies do) I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe a “correction” would bring us closer to the realm of realistic values? How naïve I was! Rather than man up and ride out the storm, two presidents collectively shoved 1.8 trillion in euphemistically named bullshit up our asses. Destroying old Volvos in efforts inexplicably related to bad mortgages is a bad idea. In fact, destroying anything to get nothing is a bad decision.

Furthermore, money is just little slips of green paper. You can use them to buy Hondas and heroin only because people have trust in an underlying system. After flushing 1.8 trillion bucks debts reached levels never before seen in the course of humanity. There’s no way to sugar coat the truth; 1.8 trillion is a big enough number to destroy a currency. (I’m not saying we’re irretrievably doomed, only that the Government foolishly assembled the elements of a weapon they should have left alone. Dinking around with interest rates it’s playing with fire but they’ve been playing with the gateway to hell.)

Aside from the scale, this could have been just another in a long line of unwise but otherwise mundane bad decisions. After all, fiscally stupid moves permeate our world. But, and this surprises me as much as anyone, the veil was lifted. Reality didn’t come as Baby Boomers retired. It came just a little bit earlier.

For no good reason, people had come to believe that houses, unlike any other asset on planet earth, were magic. Assets that could gain but never lose value. All at once, people realized that it was untrue. Of course it was untrue. I have no idea how people could have conceived otherwise. But once everyone simultaneously got a whiff of their own shit; the jig was up.

From that moment until now, America (and indeed the world) has lurched from one economic crisis to the next. I no longer ask when everyone will simultaneously realize that bullshit is not truth. I no longer ponder “when will the shit hit the fan”. Shockingly, the answer is…now!

About a year ago I started blogging. It was a post titled “When something can’t go on forever… it won’t“. It wasn’t Shakespeare but it it was something I wanted to say. I gave a humorous reason (out of many possible stories) of how I knew shit was about to go down:

When the guy who brings your pizza is driving a brand new Escalade…something is terribly wrong. That was all you needed to know about the economy in early 2005.

I wrote it not because I care about the pizza delivery guy. I wrote it because America was awash with unreality. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t a secret. Everybody and their dog knew it. Yet everyone seemed to be “playing along”. Why?

Obvious signals were everywhere. Yet few acted rationally in acceptance of that knowledge. I did. It was lonely.

So I began a blog. Among other things I wanted to say “I see things differently. I have peacefully chosen to plan accordingly. If, for whatever reason, you also reach conclusions which differ from the crowd, you’re not alone.”

I’d staked my flag on earth amid a society where an unearthly sense of denial was (and had been for some time) ubiquitous. Trying to avoid political gamesmanship (with only partial success) I focused on economics. Anyone with a understanding of economics could see the writing on the wall. Unsustainable is not a patented trademark phrase of the green movement. It can and does apply to economic systems as well. My favorite complaints were McMansions perched on subprime loans, stratospheric stock prices without underlying value, and a deliberate refusal to deal with the Ponzi nature of entitlements.

I’m not trying to air a list of grievances. Those were just a few examples to set the mood.  You’ll have a list of your own concerns. They might be entirely different from mine. Yet we might both agree that it took more and more effort to pretend things were progressing wisely. The more a sense of unreality abounded, the more self-defeating it became to entertain it.

Reality always wins. Wishful thinking is bullshit. I refused to indulge in delusion. Sometimes that stubbornness was perceived as if it were heresy. I needed an outlet; hence my little blog.

It was a sunny day and all was right with the world.  I was trailering my wood splitter to a pile of cut aspen.  Nothing makes my heart soar like “recreational logging” (and adding to my winter fire wood supply).

My truck was loaded with chainsaws, axes, and other implements of destruction.  The window was rolled down and the air was fragrant.  My gas tank was nearly empty…not that it’s a relevant detail.  My treasured camouflage baseball cap was screwed on my head.  The sky was brilliant blue.  Nothing was going to rain on my parade.

I was singing loudly, off key, and with gusto.  My tinny OEM stereo was blaring Queen’s most excellent song; “Fat Bottomed Girls“.  Karaoke machines all over the world threatened to commit suicide as I screamed out lyrics like:

"Hey I was just a skinny lad
Never knew no good from bad
But I knew life before I left my nursery - huh
Left alone with big fat Fanny
She was such a naughty nanny
Heap big woman you made a bad boy out of me
Hey hey!
Wooh"

Deep!

The song ended in a flurry of guitar power chords.  Freddy Mercury’s amazing voice sadly faded out.  It was replaced with the pandering blather of idiots pitching car sales and specials on roofing materials.  Reluctantly I switched stations.  Bad move!

Some flake on Public Radio (is the “flake” part redundant?) was ranting about how rural America is backwards and mean spirited.  The gist was that rural losers are in cahoots with nasty evil Republicans to perpetuate a gay-bashing homophobic culture.

Really?

Don’t I count?  For all the world I have the outward appearance of a rural loser.  Chickens graze on my lawn.  I hunt deer.  I think a baseball cap and denim jeans is suitable attire for anything short of meeting the Pope.  Urbane sophistication vanishes in my presence.  I’m the type of  knuckle dragging redneck who might cling to guns and religion.  So from the announcer’s point of view I’m precisely the kind of retrograde dickhead that spends my spare time time hating gays and shaking pitchforks at the city limits to Los Angeles and New York.

And yet I’m nothing like the negative image the woman was painting.  Frankly her homophobic nightmare exists more in theory than reality.  I haven’t got a problem with homosexuality.   None of the other redneck losers I know do either.   (We’re far more invested in the great Ford versus Chevy debate.)  I’ve hung out with rural folks all across America; in sawmills, on ranches, in truck stops, in gun shops, in junkyards, in private homes and in public: homophobia is pretty much ancient news.  It’s about as relevant as poodle skirts and jokes with Nixon as a punchline.

I wondered where the woman got her ideas about the world?  Does she actually know any rural folks?  Then I realized I’d just finished singing along with a dead bisexual British rocker who’s band name is synonymous with gay.  I’d shouted song lyrics which reminisce about a morally questionable, possibly pedophilic, sexual relationship with an obese female caregiver.  (And I’d sung it loud.  Hey hey!  Wooh.)  The song had been played on a generic FM station in flyover country.  The song has been played that way since it was a hit in 1978.  1978 is 33 years ago…it’s hardly cutting edge.  All that time I’ve been singing along with Queen while publicly funded radio stations insist on talking down to me.

Luckily I soon arrived at my destination.  I fired up my gear and worked like a dog for several hours.  On the way back home I carefully avoided public radio’s buzz kill.  Instead I cranked the rock and roll and happily sang along with a favorite violent anthem of mayhem.  I’ve always liked Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting“.  Good thing I’m not homophobic or I’d die every time a good song came on.